COURSES
Fall 2021 Graduate Course Descriptions
500-700 Level
The History Department has changed many of our classes to online and hybrid formats to give our students a wider access to our classes should they not be able to attend campus classes in Fall 2021. Some classes will continue to meet online at the originally scheduled time. Classes that meet face-to-face have been moved to larger rooms in order to facilitate social distancing. Please check Genie for updates. Changes continue to be possible as our world changes.
SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE! Always check the University online schedule for the latest changes.
HIS 508 - Topics in Latin American History: "Riots, Rebellions, Revolutions"
81215 TR 2:00-3:15
Denisa Jashari
What do riots, rebellions, and revolutions have in common? Why, although revolutions are rarely
successful, do they continue to fascinate, inspire, and capture varying political imaginations? Why are
certain revolutions remembered while others forgotten? What role does violence, and its
representations, play in moments of upheaval? In this course we will explore these and other
questions as we take an intimate look at Latin American revolutionary actors, from the slave revolts
that brought about the Haitian revolution, to the Mexican peasant revolution of 1910, to food riots
in Chile, and all the way to the guerrilla struggles in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains. All along, we
will ask how class, gender, race, and ethnicity shaped revolutionary actors and movements. We
situate such moments within a regional and global context and consider how economic, political,
and social factors may produce conditions suitable for revolution while we simultaneously consider
why and how revolutionary attempts fail. Just as important as the revolutionary actors and
movements themselves are the state, military, and local and transnational responses to such
moments. Counter-revolutionary reactions produced disturbing levels of state violence and
repression made more deadly using new technologies. We will examine music, posters, murals,
personal testimonies, political speeches, declassified government documents, and more!
Crosslisted with HIS 408.
HIS 510 - Historiography
81217 W 2:00-4:50
Teresa Walch
Development of the historical profession and perspectives on historical methodology. Selected readings by philosophers of history and practicing historians.
HIS 515 - American Diplomatic History: The Twentieth Century
81221 MW 2:00-3:15
David Wight
Since 1898, the United States has played an outsized role in international relations, playing a pivotal role in two world wars, the Cold War, the development of modern global systems, and the affairs of virtually every other country on Earth. Indeed, over the course of the twentieth century, the United States progressed from being a great power to the world's sole superpower. Yet the United States has likewise been profoundly shaped by its interactions with the larger world, and Americans have periodically discovered that their power, while great, is not unlimited. This course explores the trajectory of US foreign relations since 1898 with a focus on three main themes: globalization, empire, and the constructs of race and gender.
Crosslisted with HIS 415.
HIS 520 - Southern History: Selected Topics: "Freedom in the Age of Slavery"
81223 W 4:00-6:50
Warren Milteer
While most people of color in the South were enslaved on the eve of the Civil War, over 250,000 were free during the same period. This course will explore the experiences of free people of color, individuals of African and/or Native American ancestry who were free before the end of slavery in the U.S. South. Students will learn about the process of becoming free, the lives of free people of color, and the political efforts to limit the liberties of free persons. The class will cover topics such as discrimination and social interactions beyond racial boundaries.
Crosslisted with HIS 420.
HIS 546 - Topics in American Cultural History: "Understanding American Material Culture through Race, Class, and Space"
81224 R 2:00-4:50
Torren Gatson
Material culture is defined as "the study through artifacts of the beliefs—values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions—of a particular community or society at a given time." Material culture includes any and all products of human minds and hands, including landscapes, structures, and both two and three-dimensional objects. This course informs graduate students in history and public history about the history of American material culture. Incorporating multidisciplinary approaches employed in material culture studies we will consider how objects have been used to reinforce, propagate, and resist cultural hierarchies based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and national identity. We will consider these actions with a strong, but not exclusive, emphasis on consumption. Students will read, discuss, and write about the theory and methodology of material culture studies, apply material culture theory and methodology to the study of objects.
Crosslisted with HIS 446.
HIS 547 - History Museum Curatorship: Collections Management
81226 W 5:30-8:20
This course will explore the legal, ethical, and practical issues associated with the development, management, and care of museum collections. This course will examine the legal duties and ethical obligations placed on those who manage museums and their collections. Topics will include collections development, registration and record keeping, collection policies and procedures, deaccessioning, copyright, collection care, handling, and housing. Students will investigate and analyze contemporary issues within the field of Collections Management through readings, discussion, site visits, hands on project(s), and presentations from Museum professionals. Prerequisite: Admission to a graduate program in history or written permission of instructor. Same as IAR 547.
Prerequisite for all 600- 700 level History courses: Admission to a graduate program in history or interior architecture, or special permission of instructor.
HIS 627 - Museum and Historic Site Interpretation: Principles and Practice
81869 M 2:00-4:50
Torren Gatson
Who makes history and how? This seminar seeks to answer this question by exploring the relationship between history and the public, and the tools that public historians use to interpret the past. The class focuses on the theory and practice of telling stories through museums and historic sites, while examining issues of ownership and power in interpretation and community collaboration. Students will also study contemporary models of engaging with audiences and projects that make history more meaningful to people. Finally, the class will merge theory and practice with the creation of a local history project, produced by the students for a public venue. Same as IAR 627.
HIS 633 - Community History Practicum
81870 T 2:00-4:50
Anne Parsons
Prerequisite: HIS/IAR 626
In this hands-on course, students work collaboratively and engage community partners as they research, design, and complete public projects - previously planned in HIS/IAR 626 - that engage audiences in local/regional history. These projects involve original research and draw on a range of sources that drive public history work, including public records, oral interviews, images, and artifacts. Final products may involve exhibitions, web-based products, public programs, curricula, or other formats that engage public audiences in issues emerging from the past around us.
This course is restricted to graduate students in History and Interior Architecture who have completed HIS/IAR 626 (The Practice of Public History) unless permission is granted by instructor.
See the M.A. FAQ for more information about the following:
HIS 690 - Internship
HIS 692 - Advanced Topics
HIS 697 - Independent Study
HIS 699 - Thesis
Faculty permission is required to register for these courses.
HIS 701 - Colloquium in American History
81871 701-01 R 4:00-6:50
Greg O'Brien
81872 701-02 M 5:30-8:20
Warren Milteer
Issues of historical interpretation from the colonial era through the Civil War.
HIS 705 - Colloquium in European History before 1789
81873 T 2:00-4:50
Richard Barton
Topics in European social, economic, political and intellectual history from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Methodology and the diversity of historical approaches.
HIS 714 - Varieties of Teaching
81875 T 5:30-8:20
Lisa Tolbert
This course takes a big picture approach to epistemological issues of teaching and learning history in the twenty-first century. Why is history essential for the twenty-first century undergraduate curriculum? What distinctive challenges do students face in learning history compared to learning other subjects in the college curriculum? As Stéphane Lévesque asks in his analysis of historical thinking, if history is about critical inquiry, "what are the concepts and knowledge of the past that students should learn and master in order to think historically? What abilities do they need to practice history?" (Lévesque, p. 15) Coming to grips with these kinds of critical conceptual issues is essential for designing meaningful learning experiences for students. Rather than focusing on the content of history (what information do you want your history course to cover?), our focus will be on the learner. What do you want students (who are unlikely to become professional historians) to know and be able to DO with the content they encounter in any history courses you might teach? How do you know they have achieved the objectives you intended? You will encounter plenty of practical examples of how college teachers have operationalized disciplinary thinking in the classroom. This literature will also introduce you to research and publication opportunities offered by the scholarship of teaching and learning, with particular attention to research that illuminates the disciplinary role of history as an essential subject in the undergraduate curriculum.
HIS 715 - Atlantic World Topics: "Empires and Colonies of the Atlantic World (and Beyond)"
81878 M 2:00-4:50
Linda Rupert
HIS 720 - Public History Capstone I
81031 W 2:00-4:50
Torren Gatson
This course is part of a two-semester sequence in which students design and execute original, research-driven, independent-study history projects for public audiences, usually with a community or institutional partner. In the first half of the course sequence, students solidify the goals and contours of the project, complete project research, and finish preliminary development. Restricted to graduate students in the history department's Museum Studies program who have completed at least 15 hours of graduate-level course work.
HIS 723 - 19th Century U.S. Topics: "American Nationalisms"
81884 R 5:30-8:20
Mark Elliott
The motto adopted on the first national seal designed in 1776, "E Pluribus Unum," (Out of Many, One) was not an accomplished fact but a necessary goal. American nationalism is more obviously constructed than other nationalisms. Initially forged in the crucible of revolution, the project of uniting American citizens under a central government was precarious from the start and necessarily generated multiple, conflicting visions of national community. This class will study both secondary literature and primary sources to explore these conflicts, and the efforts to contain them within a unifying nationalism. Rather than attempt to define the "real" American character or identity, we will approach the topic from multiple perspectives, covering both dominant and dissenting ideas of nationalism, including Confederate nationalism, black nationalism, providential nationalism, and various forms of American exceptionalism in the 19th century. Race, class, and gender have been central to constructions of nationalism, and close attention will be paid to exclusions and inclusions in the definition of nationalism over the course of the 19th century. Special attention also will be given to how "nationalism" has been politicized at specific times for specific purposes by specific groups, and how conflicts over nationhood continue to morph and change in each era.
100-400 Undergraduate Level Courses | University Catalog | Courses
